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Interesting people, insightful points of view and incredible stories on what’s popping and not popping in marketing, tech, and culture you can use to win immediately. Brands, Beats and Bytes boldly stands at the intersection of brand, tech and culture. DC and Larry are fascinated with stories and people behind some of the best marketing in the business. No matter how dope your product, if your marketing sucks your company may suck too. #dontsuck
DC: Brand Nerds. Brand Nerds. Brand Nerds. We are grateful to be back again with another brands Beats and Bytes podcast. This one starts with a bit of a strange story, brand nerds. Oftentimes the guests that we have are folks that Larry and I have known through the course of our career. Other times Brand Nerds.
Someone will approach us and they will be a prominent figure. And we are surprised in, in brands beats and bites land that they even wanna be on our podcast. 'cause we're not really podcasters, even though we've been doing it for, uh, for six years now, coming up on seven, we're more brand and business builders.
But on a rare occasion, our relationship savant Larry might find himself in a situation where he just happens upon a fellow Brand Nerd. That's right. And that's what, that's what happened here. We, we have a fellow Brand Nerd that met Larry. Larry will tell the story, or our guest will tell the story. That said Brand Nerds,
You're fortunate that that happened. It, it was serendipity. Fortuitous, yes. And I'm gonna tell you why. First is LT,. We have a, a, a fellow Beverage brethren. Beverage brethren. We love beverage marketers because we believe, in fact, we know it's a good place to learn marketing because the liquid is largely the same as the competitors.
It's the branding and emotional connections that differentiate the brand. Not only that, we got somebody from the, one of the best proving grounds in all of the world in marketing. And then finally, brand nerds. What we say in our, uh, in our meetings internally, we say. We would like our podcast to serve as an example so that folks that are at the middle of the marketing fray, brand managers, se senior brand managers and directors looking to go get a CMO uh, title, but don't necessarily feel the need to go to business school.
How might they learn from folks that can teach sometimes at a B school level and sometimes actually in B schools? You can get that here and today, Brand Nerds. We have someone who is gone from brand management into teaching and also I think doing some consulting in on the left coast. LT, who do we having to build in today?
Oh,
LT: DC Great setup. We have Bill Pearson, the house today. Welcome, Bill.
Bill Pearce: Great to be here, guys. Player.
LT: We we're really thrilled to have you Bill and, uh, as DC alluded to, uh, bill, I'm going to give the quick, uh, story. So Brand Nerds, um, uh, as DC was alluding to, uh, I was, uh, headed to, uh, San Francisco Giants New York Mets game over the summer, and I noticed somebody at the Walnut Creek, uh, Bart stop who was wearing met gear and being from New York, I said, mentioned, Hey, by chance, are you visiting from New York?
DC: I'm sorry, Larry, can I just ask you a quick question? 'cause I'm, I'm new to sports. This is October of 2025, and I just wonder, you mentioned the Mets, how are they doing in the play? Oh, oh, they're not in the playoffs. They're not in the playoffs. You know what I, I'm, I'm sorry. Bill and Larry, maybe it's because they have been underspending.
Oh wait, no. They spent $350 million and they're still not in the Well, but I digress. I'm sorry. I had to say it. Bill had to say it.
Bill Pearce: Credit card doesn't mean you buy the right things.
DC: Oh, that's true. That's true. That's well said. That's well true.
LT: Well said, that's true. And the Giants also hit the skids. So, yeah.
And by the way. Bill, he's talking this way because he is a Detroit Tigers fan and
DC: School ball.
LT: And how often do they get to flex their muscles? Let's be honest.
Bill Pearce: Yeah. He, he'll be able to flex his muscles from around another three, three days. So,
DC: Ouch.
LT: See, you started it though. You started
DC: I did, I did.
Touche. You started, sorry, Larry. Sorry.
LT: So all good. So, so going back to the story, so I noticed Bill and we, Bill and I started talking and we quickly realized like, oh my God, we have a lot in common here. We're both from the same place. And we quickly said, oh, you. We are both of our, we're talking for five or 10 minutes now in the train, and both of our families are looking at us like, why are they talking to a stranger?
So we exchanged, uh, our information and we met at a coffee shop and we had a wonderful conversation. And that's the background for Bill coming on the podcast today. So brand nerds, let's give you though the foundation for why Bill is here, um, as, and we're gonna walk you through that background. So, like me, Bill grew up in New York, specifically in Yonkers, and like me, has also settled, as I mentioned, in the beautiful East Bay of San Francisco, uh, for college, he goes on to Syracuse University where he earns his BA in economics. His first job out of school is for four excellent years, and this is where DC was alluding to with the Miller Brewing Company in sales. And he then joins Coca-Cola, fountain Sales just missing DC and me at Coca-Cola In terms of timing.
At that point with great corporate sales background, bill decides to go back to business school and he earns his MBA in marketing and accounting from the Cornell Johnson School of Management. And as DC alluded to Brand Nerds, we can't say this enough, uh, one of the best places to earn your stripes as a marketer is Procter and Gamble.
Yes, bill goes on to spend the next 11 plus years at Proctor working in brand management on a variety of brands, including Pringle's, Folgers, and Tampax. And he's eventually working his way up to marketing Director. So when you have that kind of great experience and success in brand at P&G, there are always many recruiters coming at you with terrific job opportunities.
So Bill is finally induced to leave with a very nice promotion to be the VP of Marketing at Campbell's Soup while excelling at Campbell's Bill then gets tapped on the shoulder to be the CMO of Taco be. So after great success at Taco Bell, bill was recruited to go outside his comfort zone to become President and CCEO of Foresight Medical Technology, a startup in the emergency communications field.
So after one year in this gig, Bill then moves a bit closer to his roots joining Del Monte Foods, which we all know as CMO, as their CMO Bill leads a corporate turnaround. And he and their team triple the company's market cap, which leads to a very successful exit with an acquisition by private equity KKR.
So after all this great corporate success, Bill decides to focus on helping train the next generation of marketers. Joining the faculty of the prestigious University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business with focus on teaching MBA students brand management and new product marketing and design.
Additionally, bill is also on the board of directors for telecommunications company, Uma. That's the way they say the ads. Uma and since June of this year is on the board of advisors for the American Marketing Association, we are super excited to have this very accomplished marketer and marketing professor on the podcast today.
Welcome to Brands, Beats and Bytes. Bill Pierce.
Bill Pearce: Thank you very much. Boy, what an intro. I wish my wife could heard that one.
DC: Well, you'll have podcast.
LT: What's your wife's name, Bill.
Bill Pearce: Karen.
LT: Karen. Hopefully you're hearing this.
Bill Pearce: All you brother, this is all you. Uh, I I wanna make a comment before we get into, uh, the Get Comfy section, which where I'll ask you a question, Bill.
Brand nerds. When you see brands in modern day on fire, get curious about the origin story. In the QSR space, quick Serve restaurants. Taco Bell, I would argue, is the best marketer in the game, best marketer in the game. And, uh, that's not coincidental. I believe that comes from an origin story of great marketing that Bill helped to, uh, create the foundation for so Brand Nerds.
When you see something that's really working well, the business is working well, the metrics are working, are working well, and the marketing is just stellar. Focus on not only the moment, but also go back to determine how did this foundation get set. This is why the number one movies in the world. Top five or six are typically these superhero movies or science fiction movies that are built upon great origin stories.
So Bill, I just want to congratulate you on what you did many years ago to help Taco Bell become what it is today. So kudos to you on that.
Thank you. I mean, it was, it was a great brand when I joined. Mm-hmm. Um, it's continued to be a great brand. Mm-hmm. And, and the thing at Taco Bell, I think that made them, uh, through the years so different and better, um, is most QSRs just try to hammer you with the promotion, you know?
Yes, that's so true. A lot of competition. Yep. We used to say at Taco Bell, we had two objectives when we, when we were marketing. One was to build the big brand. Right. So everything should build on itself and the brand should be elevated. Mm-hmm. After your experience. And then the second is, yeah, we want to get you into the restaurant.
Right.
DC: Got it.
Bill Pearce: So they did something that nobody really else was doing. Maybe, maybe, maybe McDonald's, but not, I don't think as well build the brand right. First and foremost, and then sell what you're trying to sell that time.
DC: Great. Uh, great stuff. While, while, while we were back in the day, uh, at Coca-Cola, um, I did not just look at the beverage category in marketing.
Um, I, I was, uh, one of the brands that I was responsible for was Sprite and I wanted Sprite, and we all did to be the number one youth brand. In the country, not the number one youth beverage in the country. Number one youth brand. So we, we looked at Taco Bell and Nike and things like that. We, we, Taco Bell has always had, in my estimation, great marketing.
And I dare say Bill, it's because there was some blueprint created. Now I'm understanding these two points. Build a big brand and then footfall as, as the reason why I now go into our get comfy section. You started in sales. A lot of folks that go into brand management, they will come outta business school, go into brand management and they would not have had Fortune 500 sales experience beforehand.
They may have had some agency experience, some light sales, but not at, not at that level. Not at your level. So you go from sales into brand management, you then. Go up the ladder in brand management. You become a CMO in multiple places. The head of marketing in multiple places. Take yourself back Bill to when you were a brand manager, a senior brand manager, director, somewhere in that area.
You were not yet at the CMO level. What, looking back I like, I like Steve Jobs, says you look back and connect the dots. That's how it makes sense. Mm-hmm. Rest in power. That was a a, a commencement speech he gave at Stanford. Sorry about that. Uh, uh, Bill at, at Stanford.
Bill Pearce: That's okay. We do, we do plenty of things together.
DC: Us in Stanford. Okay. Wonderful. What did you do and what would you advise the brand nerds who are at that level? The middle level now? Aspiring to be CMOs. What did you do to get to the CMO level and what would you advise the brand nerds to do if they want to get to the CMO level and then succeed at the CMO level?
Bill Pearce: You know, I, I think I've seen a ton of really smart people come into marketing and, you know, usually they're there. Head down, trying to understand the consumer, getting the insights right. Mm-hmm. And all that's important, and I agree with a hundred percent and I did it too. Um, but you also have, have to have what I, what I call the X factor, right?
DC: Mm-hmm.
Bill Pearce: What makes you distinct, different, and better than the myriad of other really smart people. Mm-hmm. Um, the X factor DC that I had, that I brought to the table was that sales experience and understanding channels of distribution.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Bill Pearce: Understanding pricing, understanding the importance of merchandising, like understanding the ground game, um, and making it easy for sales to execute my program, right?
DC: Mm-hmm.
Bill Pearce: So I kind of knew it like, I can be better than those guys on these things. And not that I kept it secret, right? I would, I was always to help others, but like the sales, the sales teams would always, one, consistent through my career, the sales teams would always say. You get it. You understand what we need, you know, not what you want us to say.
And uh, that got me top of mind. You know, people used to always say, they always work on your stuff first. How do you do that? I'm like, you know, I try to make it as easy as possible for them to execute the things I needed done in the store at the point of sale. You know, make it easy. And that I learned from Koch, right?
Mm-hmm. Koch was, Hey, we'll deliver for you. We'll put it on the shelf for you. Mm-hmm. We'll display it. You want us build six displays? We'll do that for you. 'cause they need easy to execute. And they knew if I can get points of disruption, that was a term that K used to use when I was there. If I can get points of disruption.
DC: That's right.
Bill Pearce: I can get incremental sales.
LT: Oh D, this is so good.
DC: So any reactions, Larry? Yes, please.
LT: This is so good. So Bill, I think you've just spoken something that we've never focused on on the podcast. That is a huge point mm-hmm. That to really be a successful marketer at any level, if you don't get the sales folks, and we're talking CPG now, right?
Right. If you don't get the sales folks to care about your brand, you, your chances of success are minimal. Conversely, if you do what Bill did, and you understand as Bill said, that the sales, sales looks at you as, oh, you get us and you understand what we need. Mm-hmm. It, it could, it could grow you exponentially.
And I know with, um, I'll, I'll tell a quick story from me when we had some issues towards the end of my first year on Powerade, um, in Houston, which was a very big market. And I was there for some reason. And the, the, our, the head of the bottler there said, you've got big problems here and if you want to fix them, you need to come and help me fix them.
If you do that, I pledge to you right now that we'll do this together and we'll fix it together. And he and I made the pledge and for the next three months I went to Houston like every other week, you know? Mm-hmm. To ha to be there. And after that three months, he paid me one of the biggest compliments was, you're the only person I had a lot.
I've had brand folks come through here, and you're the only person who's actually did what they said they were gonna do as it relates to us on the ground here. It, it went a long way. So if you, and, and we by the way, did really well in Houston after that because everybody was, was pulling in the same direction.
The point here is it's a huge X factor. Anybody in marketing who's on the CPG world or in the in places where sales is really an integral part of your success, you best get together with your sales counterparts and really row the row the same way and understand them to the point where you get what they need and deliver.
Bill Pearce: You know, I, I've worked most of my career in CPG did, did some time in tech, um, CPG, like sales and marketing were always like, maybe they were quarrel and cousins, but there was a recognition of we need each other. Yes. Um, where tech. Sales looks at marketing as like your overhead expense. Yeah, yeah. Totally true.
You know, and it's like, I just never, never got it. Like good marketing should accelerate and ignite the sales team, like better leads, whatever. But it should make you run faster and jump higher to use the old PF flyer, uh, logo.
DC: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bill Pearce: Yes. And that gets in the way sometimes and it's just like, that's a self-inflicted wound, just that can't happen.
LT: Right.
DC: I'll add just one point here and then we'll move to the next section, and that is this X factor point that you made, Bill. Brand Nerds, if you're smart enough to get into Berkeley halls, if you're smart enough to get into Kellogg, if you're smart enough to get into, uh, HBS, any of these schools or Stanford, you are around other smart people.
It's not like you getting in or getting an MBA makes you special. It does not. That's right. What makes you special is what differentiates you and Bill. The fact that you recognize that is phenomenal with a sea of highly capable brand folks. You zeroed in on the thing that you thought would make you stand out from the crowd, commendable brother, and at a young age, commendable.
Bill Pearce: Yeah. You know, I just, I always loved sales, Amanda. I loved making the presentation, so I think when I got in the job, I almost stumbled upon it, like mm-hmm. These days I, I wish I could say it was like that was my plan. Mm-hmm. So when I got into the job and I understood. Kind of the, the sales function.
Mm-hmm. And started meeting with the sales teams. All of a sudden it took a life of its own and the positive feedback loop started and I was like, oh, I found something here.
DC: Mm. Yeah. That's really good, Bill. That's really good. Larry, anything more before we go to the next segment?
LT: A very quick point, and then we'll go to the next segment.
I love the way Bill said sales and marketing and CPG are quarreling cousins. That's very well said. And the sales cousins, when they see somebody in marketing that is of them, they're always of them. So they're gonna want to, um, uh, enhance and, and, and make sure that what they're doing is at the top level.
So that's a huge thing that Bill really itemized and, and took to the next level.
DC: Cautionary, uh, edition when the sales team sees you as not of them. That's right. And never going to be of them. Gonna be hard. Brand nerds gonna be really hard in that organization.
Bill Pearce: Yeah. It's hard to come back from that. Yeah.
DC: Hard to come back. Hard to come back. And by the way, I, I think hopefully most brand nerds know this. I know. You know this bill. Pretty decks with insights is not going to get you endeared to the sales team. You gotta, that's more than that. Alright, here we go.
Bill Pearce: Here's the, here's one final one. Final one.
DC: Go ahead. Go ahead.
Bill Pearce: Hey, if your brand manager are out there and you think they're gonna look at your 30 page deck, yes. You gotta give them two pages, you know, front and back page. Yep. Yes. Of the things you want them to present in priority order. So, you know, cut to the, cut to the chase. This is like a creative brief for the sales organization.
You gotta cut all the fat and get to the meat and say this before this, this before this. That's what I'm trying to get to. Questions.
DC: Alright, I, I, I'm sorry, I, I've gotta digress just for a moment here, Bill, and tell a quick story and then we will get to the next segment. You've been through this many times, bill, uh, as has Larry, anybody in brand management, your annual brand planning, pre process, and then presentation.
Yes. So with Coca-Cola, you'll know this Bill. You sit in front of the, the U-shaped table. Mm-hmm. And you present your plan and you have many senior managers there. Some of them are bottlers in the world of Coca-Cola. You know this very well, bill. All of the budget just goes directly towards, uh, brand Coke. 'Cause that's the name of the building. It's, it's almost like a magnetic field. The rest of the brands that are not a derivative or line extension of Coke are left to fight for the scraps. I was leading the Sprite brand, knowing this. My counterpart, his name's Steve Hutcherson. Brilliant guy. Guy,
LT: Great guy.
DC: He present very smart Bill. He presents the Koch brand plan. And, uh, he goes through all of it. You know, at this point it was like, acetates Bill, you know what these are? Oh, I do. I do like this big, you know, like, almost like a phone book. You know what that is too. And, uh, he, he gets like, great job. I come up, bill and I said, um, what Hutch talked to you about was your, uh, base salary.
I'm here to talk to you about your bonus. Ooh. And I had a card. A card. This is our plan. My team went around and passed out the cards, uh, and I walked them through a card, standing ovation, bottlers did everything we wanted them to do, right? They did everything we wanted to do. Okay.
Bill Pearce: That's awesome.
LT: Yeah, and that's why dC was Brand Week, Market of the Year. Bill,
DC: Thank, thank you.
LT: Reasons, but go ahead.
Bill Pearce: That's awesome.
DC: Thank you. Five questions. So Bill, this section, we go back and forth until we, uh, with questions till we arrive at five. I'm in the batter's box, unlike anyone from the Mets at this time. Okay, here we go. Okay, here we go. Alright. What was your first branding experience, Bill, take yourself back. Back in time. You were so into this brand or brand experience, it just lit your soul. A fire made your heart flutter. You love this brand, you love this experience. You could not get enough of it, you could not get it off your mind. A bit like a first love. What was it for you, Bill?
Bill Pearce: So I'm 14 years old. Um, I'm on the, uh, cross country team at my high school. Mm-hmm. And we race at Van Cortland Park in the Bronx.
LT: Give your high school a shout out, Bill.
Bill Pearce: Sacred Heart High School, Yonkers, New York. Fighting Irish. Um, and you know, back then. There really wasn't an athletic shoe category. There were mm-hmm.
Chuck Taylors for playing basketball. That's right.
DC: Chuck Taylors. Yes.
Bill Pearce: Yeah, right. Um, but, you know, there was Adidas, um, uh, but it was out, you know, it was, you didn't, they didn't sell 'em in every store. It's like brand people are listening, going, how old is this guy? It's like a, I'm not that old. Right? Yeah.
So this category has exploded over the last 32.
DC: It has.
Bill Pearce: Um, but I found a brand sold by a retired New York City fire firemen out of a van, and it's the only place you could buy these things. They were running shoes, which was this kind of magical new thing, and it was this brand with this weird mark on the side of it called Nike.
Before Nike, you could get it in stores. I bought it off a van from a retired, and he would show up to the track meets and cross country meets, and he'd open up his van doors, man. And all these kids would, would flow down, just be like, oh God. You know? And you know, I remember going back, um, talking to my mom like, Hey, uh, you know, I hate to ask, but, and it was a, a big leap to buy a $30, $40 pair of shoes.
But that one, and it was like, you know, amazing. You know, just, and I, I wore those, they were racing shoes too. And I wore those racing shoes probably for two plus years, um Wow. Before I got another pair and, you know, bought training shoes there and, you know, all of a sudden then to see Nike, you know, and now it's in stores, then they go into basketball.
Right then they're into baseball. It's like Nike's exploding. And I'm like, I bought my first pair of Nikes before they had distribution.
LT: Wow. Wow.
Bill Pearce: That's great. Yeah. And so that brand, you know, I literally saw the Embryonics phase and have always loved that brand. I mean, the marketing has always been great.
DC: Oh yeah, yeah.
Bill Pearce: Way back when they built that brand upon material science and understanding the athlete. Um, and, and that's at the core of the DNA of that brand to this day. And so, you know, when I go back and think about fundamental brand experiences, I go back to Nike.
LT: Love this. D you know, I got some Nike stories.
DC: Uh, go ahead. Go ahead Larry.
LT: Um, so Bill in the, in the Powerade days and, um, when I was leading Powerade, um, at the time, um. We were the official sports drink of the, of, of the Olympics. And, you know, we were encouraged, not encouraged. We were told, that when you do brand partnerships, you had to do brand partnerships with other Olympic sponsors.
Mm-hmm. And so we had the idea, we wanted to form, uh, Powerade a, uh, track club. And so, uh, and, and by the way, at the time, Dion Sanders was our first, uh, spokesperson and endorsement person, and he was represented by Nike Sports Management, which had an, uh, a, they, the reason why Nike Sports Management, and this goes back to brand, that was an, they were serving as agents for the high profile Nike athletes.
Because before that, Andre Agassi, one of their highest profile Nike athletes of all time, did a Canon camera commercial. And of course, playing on the word image. They had a closeup shot of Andre Agassi and he said, image is everything. And Phil Knight just about had a core coronary right there. And Phil Knight Brand Nerds is the founder with Bill Bowerman of Nike.
Um, so that's, so Phil Knight said, we are ne this is never happening again. So that's why they started the management arm. So, um, we then, uh, were working with, very closely with Nike through the Dion relationship, and I knew that Nike could build a track club for our brand, that Reebok couldn't do. I was told, you need to talk to Reebok.
I'm like, I'm not talking to Reebok. There's no way they can't do it. Very long story short, we made the pitch and Nike was totally with it because it brought them more money, they could then sign more athletes and they were fine with managing the Powerade Athletic Club 'cause they were in all Nike gear.
So it was a win-win proposition that we came to them. With, and it was a wonderful, it was a wonderful thing, and it's all about brand to the athlete of the brand at Nike, one of the main buildings there. Um, they still have, they hold it up in high esteem. Steve pre Fontain was the athlete originally built their brand on in the early seventies who was unfortunately killed in a car accident.
And he was a, a brilliant track runner. COO Bay Oregon. Exactly. COOs Bay, Oregon. And he had all kinds of fights with the A a U and everything. And Nike still has the letters getting suspensions from a a u and all the things because it's all about the ethos of the athlete. Go. And so that's why they were selling to Bill out of the trunk of their cars 'cause they were selling to the top high school athletes.
Bill Pearce: Their amazing brand story, um, founded by a coach and an athlete a. Yes. Um, 'cause Knight ran for Knight, ran for, uh, Bowman.
LT: That's right.
Bill Pearce: And, um, your, your mention of Prefontaine, who was the best American middle distance runner ever. Mm-hmm. Um, it was a, a tragedy. Um, what happened, uh, to him. 'cause he would've gone on set every American ray.
Well, he owned every American record from the mile to the 10,000 and everything in between. Just an incredible athlete and, but the spirit of Prefontaine Oh yeah. He was a ferocious competitor who once said, and I've always remembered this, it's like, uh, when we to the line, I want the other guys in the race to know, he may not beat me today, but it's gonna hurt.
And like that, that, that runs through Nike, that notion of competitiveness at fire. Right. That brand DNA has stayed there and whenever they've strayed. They've always pulled it back and the brand goes on another tranche of of growth.
LT: Yes. And D, I I, I want to want you to talk and then go to the next question, but what's interesting, uh, there was a lot of fanfare a few months ago that they walked away from, um, from Just Do It.
They actually didn't walk away from just do it. If you saw the ads, they gave the ethos underneath Just do it. Yeah. So they romanticized just do it. But it made a lot of headlines and, uh, I thought that that was probably conscious as
Bill Pearce: well. You know, I, I, I looked at their, their marketing 'cause, you know, I saw the, the headlines and, you know, taglines change, right?
You know, it, it has to evolve. Um, but what they didn't walk away from was the core of the brand, right? Mm-hmm. You know, I think the creative brief that drove that change was probably like, Hey, we need to refresh it, but we're not changing all of these things. Oh yeah, that's right. And it was evolutionary.
Um, and very true to Nike. 'cause as I watched it and I'm waiting for the, the selling line, I'm like, eh, it's the same campaign. Done. Well, but they didn't really change it.
LT: Agreed. D, what say you,
DC: Steve Prefontaine? I have not heard that name utter in many, many years. I admired that dude, his ferocity. I, oh yes.
I admired him. This quote here that I had not heard before, he may not beat me today. When we told the line, he may not beat me today, but it's going to hurt. I recall either something that I read, or maybe it was a documentary on Prefontaine. These athletes, even back in the seventies, even in college locally, they were celebrities.
They were not national or global celebrities in the way that we think about them now. Prefontaine was a bit of a national celebrity. He's one of the few track and field athletes that transcended track and field. Uh, even, even before the Dans, if you will. Uh, the Reebok, Dans, I saw this about this young man.
He is doing some kind of activity with some young runners. They're kids. He's supposed to be playing with them. One of them takes off as if he's going to win this race. It's not even a real race. Prefontaine walked his ass down, okay? Walked him down and said to the, and basically said to the kid, even when we're just playing around, I'm not losing.
I am not losing. Yep. I I just love this dude. Love this dude. Larry. Next question, brother.
LT: Yeah. Okay. So, uh. Bill when, uh, when thinking about people, um, in your life and whatnot, um, who is Hatters having the most influence on your career?
Bill Pearce: So the first boss I had at P&G was a gentleman by the name of Jeff Dufrene.
And, uh, Jeff to this day, um, I mean, I still give him all the credit. Um, you know, he took a, uh, you know, a, a recent MBA grad, probably thought it knew more than what it did.
DC: Um, and very, that's many recent MBA grad.
Bill Pearce: Yeah, totally. Yeah, totally. Very purposely. Um, very strategically, um, you know, broke me down, put me back together and made me.
Uh, instead of somebody, you know, a, a a lump of clay, you know, recent grad turned me into a productive marketer. And, you know, sometimes it was by beating me over the head with two by four, and sometimes it was a pat in the back, but he always seemed to know, do the right way and just develop my skills, um, develop my leadership, um, uh, you know, develop my outlook, you know, how to go about the job.
And also like made me think like, that's what I want to be like for people when I manage them, I lead them, right? I don't want to be the hovering boss. I want to be the boss. It's like, Hey, move it this way. Five degrees, right? And, and that's what he was superb at. Um, and, you know, just had profound impact.
On the balance of my career. Wow. I love that. Have you ever
LT: told Jeff this?
Bill Pearce: I have, yeah. Um, he's retired now. Um, you know, we don't talk as much as, you know, I would, like, I haven't talked to him a little bit. I, you know, this is an impetus for me to go back and, and Sure. Uh, and tell him that again.
LT: Shout out, shout out to Jeff.
I hope you, uh, listened to this. Uh, and, and the Jeff Dufrene of the world are so important, um, for all of us need models and mentors, right? Yep. And so, and, and so think about Jeff imbuing you with what he did, not only in your, um, corporate career, uh, Bill, that you have, you know, modeled and mentored, but now as a professor, you're taking him to, dare I say, thousands of students that you, that you're gonna teach over time.
And, uh, so when you have someone like that. Uh, that's where the exponentiality of what someone like Jeff does is incredible.
Bill Pearce: Yeah. I, I, I think like I was lucky enough in addition to Jeff, I had other people pour into me Sure. Early in my career. Um, and there's no way I would've done what I did in my career without their intercession, guidance, leadership, coaching, whatever you want to call it, and all of those things above.
And I was very cognizant that people took the time to do that. 'cause it P&G, right. It's, it's, it's a lot going on, but still people took time to invest that in me. Yeah. What I know it caused them to have to see later that day. Right. And. I took that and A, I did that for people, but B also was like, you know what?
There's gonna be a point in my career where it's time to give back at scale. I don't know what that looks like. And honestly, when the opportunity to teach at Berkeley came up, I was like, that's it. Right? I get a chance to pour back into people. I can help them early in my career. And the promises I make to 'em on the first day of class is if you work hard in this class, then you have, um, a resource, a coach, a mentor for life.
All you have to do, you know where I am, you know, I have an email address. You know, all you have to do is contact me and we'll figure out some time, and I can do whatever I can. Sometimes it's. Career tuneups. Sometimes it's advice, they're at a fork in the road, career, personal life, whatever. Sometimes it's just, Hey, I'm working on a project.
Would love to get your take. Um, what would you have done? You know, sometimes it's five minutes, sometimes it's an hour. Um, but I still have people from the first class I spoke at be, uh, I taught at Berkeley that still contact me and say, Hey, it's time for a tuneup. I need a pierce tuneup. So that's, uh, you know, I love to do it.
Um, and it's a thank you to all the people that did, did it for me.
LT: That's amazing.
DC: Mm. Question for you, Bill, you, I would imagine at this point have had thousands of students, uh,
Bill Pearce: you know, I never stopped to add 'em up. Um, yeah, probably, probably thousands.
DC: Yeah, probably thousands I'm guessing here. Yeah. How are you able to discern what kind of tuneups different students need?
LT: Uh, great question.
Bill Pearce: That's a great question. Um, you know, I listen a lot, you know, Hey, tell me what's going on, you know, what are you struggling with? Um, and some of it is, you know, we do have a prior relationship and that I always try to draw back on because I want them to feel like, you know, I remember. Um, and so I usually try to remind them of something they did really good in our first go round.
Um, and we go from there. And, uh, you know, I, I, it's a thrill. I've had several former students that meet people that know me in the career, you know, they're like, mm-hmm. I, I, I graduated from Berkeley Haas. Oh yeah. A friend of mine on the faculty there. Who? Bill. Oh, Bill. Bill's my mentor. Mm.
LT: Wow.
Bill Pearce: And one of my friends said, how many people do you mentor?
I mentor, you know, X. Many kids that have said you're their mentor. And I'm like, that is awesome. You know?
LT: There's no bigger compliment than that actually.
Bill Pearce: No. There's no bigger compliment.
LT: No.
DC: Mm. Great. Great.
LT: The next question, D?
DC: Yes. You have been in sales, you've been in marketing, you have been and currently are a professor, and you've succeeded in all three of those areas.
This next question has not a thing to do with any of those successes, Bill. We all have 'em This? Yeah, we all have. This has to do with your biggest F up. Yep. And most importantly, bill, not the F up, even though we want a big one. What you learn from it.
Bill Pearce: Alright. Just a little bit of background. Mm-hmm. So if you came to work for me mm-hmm.
Um, on the first day we talk about job and project responsibilities, blah, blah, blah. But as you were leaving that first meeting, I would say, Hey, rules of the road. I got three simple rules. As long as you don't violate these
DC: mm-hmm.
Bill Pearce: Like, we'll get along great. Mm-hmm. And the first is no drama. We all have drama in our life outside of work.
We don't need more drama. So No drama.
LT: Hey, hey, Mary J Blige from Yonkers. Yes. You know That's right. No drama there.
Bill Pearce: No drama. No drama. Second, no surprises. I want to hear when things go poorly, as fast as I hear when things go well. Right. So something's gonna happen. It's gonna, bad thing is gonna happen, let me know.
And the third, no self-inflicted wounds. Like if you make a mistake, fix it. But if you make the same, my mistake repeatedly, now we got a problem. So that's as a background. Um, a Matt Delani Monte, I'm CMO, I've got a very, very bright VP of marketing working on new products, and they've come up with a concept for, uh, an at-home smoothie.
Uh, that, you know, Jamba Juice was going crazy. There was a big new, oh yeah. More fruits and vegetables into our diet. And they came up with this really like, interesting way, like, Hey, we can make it, uh, as good as Jamba Juice, and all you have to do is have a blender and ice at home. Just pop this stuff, put it in there, boom.
Mm-hmm. All um. Fruit. It's all natural, you know, it was, and we mixed them up and we did all the testing, like, what if they've got this blender or that blender or, you know, and basically it was a, you can't screw this up. If you can make ice and you can plug in a blender, you can have a smoothie at home. But there was something in the packaging, the presentation where I'm like, something's bothering me here, right?
Mm-hmm. Just spidey senses going off and, and I push back on the team and I'm like, something's here that we haven't figured out yet.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Bill Pearce: I'm gonna push this through another round of testing. Let's bring Basis in to, to do the testing. So we
DC: Oh, Basis Oh yes.
Bill Pearce: Yeah. So, yeah. Yep. And you know, Basis is the best of what they do, but they're not perfect.
Right? Yeah. And the base test came back and the volumetric forecast was outstanding. You know, it was great on value, it was great on this, it was great on that. And one of the things that came back was that it was more convenient. And I'm like, that's always a winner. More convenient is always a winner.
And so I'm a data guy, you know, so I was uneasy, but the data came in, the data was overwhelming and I'm, I bought it hook, line, and sinker, and I said, go right.
Let's launch this bad boy. We did to much fanfare and then nothing happened. We launched and it just, just
DC: Crickets.
Bill Pearce: Not no movement. And then you're like, okay, did we get the marketing plan right? Do we get the, you know, the, the media plan? Did it run like, you know, we do all the checks and everything was like, yep, no, it got executed the right way.
Mm-hmm. But still, like consumption was just nothing compared to the basises forecast. Right. And Basis was like, wow, this one really didn't go well, kind of thing. And mm-hmm. We, we go back and we do it postmortem
DC: Mm-hmm.
Bill Pearce: Go back to the Basis. Right. And meanwhile now we're picking a product and my CEO is so mad at me, he can't even talk.
Right, right. You know, just, it was just a flop. And what it came down to was when I read the Basis report and it said more convenient. Mm-hmm. I read that as it's convenient. And when we talked to kind of the people that bought it and tried it,
DC: More convenient than what?
Bill Pearce: Exactly. More convenient than chopping it up myself.
It was more convenient than
DC: Got it.
Bill Pearce: But it wasn't convenient. Got, got it. So I felt one word more, you know, more convenient. I read that as woo, we're convenient, right? Nope, we weren't, we were not convenient. We were more convenient. But that one word killed that idea. And what should have been, you know, a very profitable a hundred million plus introduction, which would've made it like it was forecast to be one of the 10 best food and beverage items for the year.
You know, did like $20 million, something like that. Which is, you know, it missed the mark. And that lesson I learned was like, man, one word from the consumer. Can be the difference between success and failure and misreading that one word. It was kind of like, you know, it was kind of like I had the plane going north when it really, it was like, no, you wanna go northwest.
Right. You know, it's like we missed by big, you know, a big amount by one word.
LT: Wow.
Bill Pearce: That no one else saw. Right. Market research, people didn't see my brand. People didn't see, uh, customers didn't see, I mean, Walmart was so excited about this. And it was like, and then, you know, when I'm doing the postmortem, I'm like, one word and having to go and tell, you know, do the postmortem, explain that to the CEO and then the board and I, I had to get up there and say, yep, we missed it.
We did all the right things. We read it the wrong way. I missed it by one word. I said that's on, you know? 'cause I can't blame the people that work for me. I'm the one with the experience. I was the one that was not easy. I knew something was off.
DC: Yeah.
Bill Pearce: That was one word.
LT: That's a great story. Do you have a response?
DC: This is one of the best answers we have had to the question of f up in a learning. I have a comment. Uh, it's not quite as pronounced as what you've just outlined, but what I used to talk with my team about when they would come to me to discuss the data, because I, to 'em, a data guy, about averages, and I learned this from someone that actually worked for me, is that, uh.
If they laid you down on the table bill and put your head in the refrigerator and your feet in an oven, on average, yeah, you might have an average body temperature, but you'd be very uncomfortable.
Bill Pearce: Yeah.
DC: And uh, and so for my team and for myself, we really go deeper than just the averages. Yep. Because averages are helpful.
They don't tell the full story. Nope. And what I have learned over the course of my career and uh, is that you, you, you gotta go beyond the averages. The second one, and you've said this, is that always trust your instincts.
LT: Yes.
DC: Under, under all circumstances, trust your instincts. You knew something was a little off.
Yep. And I will tell you this brand nerds and then Larry, I want to get your response to this. Over the course of my years on this planet, the number of times that my instincts have told me something, and I use my rational mind to convince me otherwise that, that my rational mind, mind has been right and my instinctual mind has been wrong.
I have my rational wr mind has been right, zero times zero. The instinct is always better than the rational. Yeah, that's my response. What a great answer, Larry.
LT: It's a great story and unfortunately sometimes when your instinct tells you it's very hard to describe to somebody, yes, it's my gut feel, and you don't have the rational.
Sometimes you can come up with a rational to explain your gut feel, but you're right, DC a couple really interesting things from, from Bill's story. Bill. First, thank you for that story. It's a great story and that is a big F up and, and we love the way. You told the story and gave even the postmortem. I think you both will find this really interesting.
I was at Tropicana Bill before Coca-Cola and I was a brand manager for Tropicana Pure Premium. But before that I was on Tropicana new products. And we had also, this is so interesting from a consumer perspective, identified a, uh, actually was convenient, was in bottle, um, product that was basically a Jamba Juice smoothie and we knew it tested through the roof and everything.
But we could not make it work because it had to be at a certain price point. At least that's what the research told us. And we couldn't make it in a profitable way at the price point that it needed to be at. We knew the consumer demand was through the roof. So I think it's really interesting. That's why I tell the story.
You obviously, there was great consumer demand. The timing of this was different. This was in the nineties. Yours was, uh, in Del Monte in the two thousands. Um, but, but what I, I still think that that's interesting. You know, the consumer demand of that, um, is, is very, uh, similar.
Bill Pearce: It, it's funny, uh, 'cause I remember telling the team and like, like, uh, ready to drink or made at home smoothies is like a graveyard of brands that have tried.
Yeah. You know, and then, you know, we convinced ourselves No, no, but we've got the cred.
DC: We we got the sauce.
Bill Pearce: Yeah, we got the sauce. And we actually did at one weird level, you know, but yeah. Could bullet off. Right.
DC: Before we go to the next question, uh, sorry, Larry, were you saying it something else?
LT: No, it's very interesting.
It's real. It's a really cool story.
DC: The irony of the story is the following, your CEO was so upset with you that he could not speak to you.
Bill Pearce: Yep.
DC: And the reason why is because what you did is all three of the things that you said you did not want anybody to do when they worked for you. Oh, I had no drama.
I did it in no drama way. Oh, okay. No drama way. Okay. When you called him drama, can you imagine the, the earnings call that this guy had, he's trying to explain after he mentioned you did self-inflicted injury, you surprised because you didn't, and youre, come on Bill, you gotta do better, brother. You gotta do better.
Bill Pearce: Well, well, you know. After about a week, he was able to mutter something to me. Okay. Mu okay. About two weeks, weeks, I was then back in the good graces. I think
DC: I like mutter. All right, Larry, next question. Great answer Bill. Great answer.
LT: So Bill, regarding technology and marketing, can you tell us where you think marketers should lean in or best leverage tech, or you can give us areas or an area that you think that they should be leery or simply avoid?
Bill Pearce: Alright, so I'm gonna go to leery first 'cause I've got a great, um, I've got an ax to grind with the industry. Um, I think, um, the emergence and, and growth of performance marketing, growth marketing, um, is dangerous for brands. I'm not saying don't do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it has a role, especially in the rollout of new products and services.
However. What performance marketing or growth marketing doesn't do well at all is sell the big brand.
LT: Yep.
Bill Pearce: Optimization to find the right set of keywords. Yep. That gave you a sign up. But nobody knows really, really what they bought. So, yep. To me, growth marketing is a tactic that, that should exist within a brand or marketing strategy structure should use it to one of your tools but not a hundred percent. You know, or figure out a way to do, uh, growth marketing that you can sell a brand message in there. 'cause otherwise you're gonna be dealing with the things that all growth marketers fear, which is churn. 'cause if you don't give people a reason why they should pay more, why they should stay with you, then eventually they're gonna be seduced out.
Of your domain by somebody giving them even a bigger discount or more free weeks or whatever. So that's a thing that I see out here in the Bay Area, in the tech world all the time. Yep. Industry has to do better, just not good enough.
LT: Love that. D, what do you think?
DC: I am, uh, giddy. Bill, I'm, I'm giddy about this.
Bill Pearce: Yeah.
DC: Warren Buffet? No, go. No, go ahead, Bill. Go ahead.
Bill Pearce: No, I, it's like, it's one of the things, um, that I teach on because we, we send a lot of students into the tech world, right. And before I send them in there, I actually, I have a diagram. I show 'em. I'm like, here's marketing strategy, here's brand strategy, kind of the Venn diagram.
Here's the interaction. You know, there's an interaction, but you should think of these as separate things, right? Marketing strategy is the, the who, the what, the, where the brand is. Here's what I want you to think.
LT: Thank you, Bill.
Bill Pearce: Yeah. Yes, absolutely. And in, and innovation strategies. The third section of that.
Yeah. 'cause good. You can't do your innovation well without knowing what your brand is, without figuring out marketing strategy. And then growth Marketing is a tactic over here. It's a tactic, right? So there is no growth strategy. There is a marketing strategy to drive growth, but growth strategy is, you know, and that's a, your fool's errand.
DC: Uh, the Sage of Omaha, Warren Buffet has a quote, and the quote is the most important thing. And and is trying to find this isn't from an investor's perspective, it's trying. And also big investor by the way of Coca-Cola. Mm-hmm. Which Bill and Larry and I know about is trying to find business.
Bill Pearce: Cherry Coke King.
DC: Cherry. Cherry Coke King. Yes. Uh, and also Dairy Queen King QSR. The most important thing is to try to find a business with a wide and long lasting moat around it. Yep. Protecting a terrific, I think it's an economic castle is with with an honest Lord in charge. So he's speaking of the executives there. I want to go back to the moat.
Building a big brand is a Mote brand Nerds growth marketing. I've not heard it described as a tactic bill, but I agree with you. Growth. Growth is a performance marketing growth strategy. I do believe it is a tactic. And the reason why I believe it is because there will always be. Competitors who figure out how to dial something up that will perform slightly better than you are doing.
That's going to happen all the time in that, I think.
No, I think, go ahead, Bill.
Bill Pearce: Go ahead. No, I, I, I think so. I love Google and I hate Google all at the same time.
LT: Yeah.
Bill Pearce: I think Google has been amazing. I mean, I, their business model is unparalleled. It is. It is. I haven't seen a better one. However, what they do from the ability to get inside the C-suite and explain to CEOs and CFOs, you spent this on Google, here's your return is gross.
DC: Yeah.
Bill Pearce: And so every year they get a little bit more, A little bit more, A little bit more.
DC: That's right.
Bill Pearce: That gets a little bit weaker or a little bit weaker. A little bit weaker.
DC: Great point, Larry.
LT: Yeah. Then when you build on YouTube. As the connecting part of that too. Right? Right. It, it, it enhances that story.
Now, now, I love that Bill has this, uh, DC and I fight this fight all the time. We talk about just what you said, Bill. There's building a brand. There's marketing strategies and tactics to help build the brand and the performance. Marketing is an important part of that, those marketing strategy and tactics.
But it cannot be the lead dog. It has to ultimately be a brand that you're emotionally connecting. And by the way, that's not just B2C. It's B2B as well. Yep.
Bill Pearce: And, and Larry, we're fighting the same battle again with a different enemy. Right? This is the brand versus trade spending wars. Oh yeah. You know, and now it's, this is again, being pulled outta brand spending.
So if you're CPG and you've got all this money going into trade, now you're doing this performance, which look, PG is on this, um, oh yeah. You know, and they're spending like, I think 13% of their advertising spending in it. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying do it in a way that builds the brand. And if you're Google, Google will like optimize it.
Google doesn't even care if the words make sense.
LT: That's right.
Bill Pearce: You know, commitments go up, you know? No, there has to be a standard, but no, this is the message that we need to build, reinforce, or change.
LT: Love it. D, you ready for the next question?
DC: I am, Bill.
Bill Pearce: Yep.
DC: What are you most proud of?
Bill Pearce: Oh, um, my family.
100%. Um, and I want to talk to the marketers that we, we talked about who are listening here, right? Mm-hmm. Um, we work, I. Because we want to do better for our families. We don't work for the aggrandizement of ourselves.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Bill Pearce: Um, we should always be focused on why am I doing this Right? Um, and if it's having a deleterious impact on your family, don't do it now.
Mm-hmm. As you're climbing the ladder. Right. We had to move around a lot different jobs, you know, and that has an impact on the family. Um, and I'm so grateful to my wife, who, she's a doctor. She retired, um, from, she retired early 'cause we had the conversation of like, Hey, you know, we've got these three kids, how best to do this.
And it was like, okay. So she selflessly prioritized my career over hers. So that we could pour into our kids the way we wanted to. Hmm. And you know, again, it probably wasn't easy for them as we moved. And some of these moves weren't, you know, down the block, they were across the country. And we, I'm so proud of is that we are a tight family.
And we we're a family that loves to have fun together. They're, I have three kids that are all functioning members of society. I'm incredibly proud. Congratulations them all. Thank you. Yeah. And, uh, so without question, I, I look, I look back and, and, and here's the thing, and here's the thing. I want to really bring it up to, you know, the people that listen to the show.
When I came outta B-School, I thought, yeah, I'm pretty bright. And then I met all the other people that joined P&G and I'm like, there are a lot of bright people here. Oh yeah. You know, so I, I. Made a, a, a deal with myself and I said, you know what? My career cannot take over my life. 'cause I'm a dad and a husband and so I put myself on a budget.
I'm like, if I can't get promoted to the next level by working 50, 55 hours a week, then I'm not smart enough to get to the next level.
Hmm.
So I will go in early so I could be home for at, uh, for dinner. Mm-hmm. At the dinner. Like, I know I'm gonna have to travel, I know there are gonna be meals I miss, there's games I miss, there's plays I'm gonna miss because I'm traveling.
Right?
DC: Mm-hmm.
Bill Pearce: But if it's Tuesday night and I'm working 10 miles down the road, I'm gonna be home for dinner and we're gonna spend that time together as a family. Mm-hmm. And. You know, again, my wife is amazing and when I was traveling or when I did have to deliver the annual plan where, you know, you go past your budget if family hours per week, um, she always protected, uh, me, like if the kids were complaining, welcome dad's not home because dad's doing something important for the family.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Bill Pearce: And so again, I'm just so grateful to my wife. I'm so proud of my kids. Um, they're star have kids now. That's a blast. Mm-hmm. Um, and I've got ones, uh, Presbyterian minister. He's doing good for the world. I've got two that are in grad school right now that want to go into marketing. So, um, they're gonna do good things for the industry in the future.
LT: That's amazing. So we have, Karen, can you shout out your, your three kids please?
Bill Pearce: Yep. My, uh, uh, oldest is Ryan. He's the, uh, minister. Uh, Morgan and Casey are my daughters and they're both finishing up their MBAs at Duke right now.
LT: Well, as, as I'd like to say, that's a wonderful place, but it is a four letter word coming from. It's, no, that's, that's awesome. It is a great school. That's amazing. And obviously you've told me that, so I knew it. But, uh, this, this is a wonderful thing to be proud of. And D and I love where Bill is coming about. It's all about balance. I mean, that's the one word that Bill was talking about and putting family at the forefront in balance.
Uh, I I think that's an easy bow to put on. Uh, D you have anything to else to add before we
DC: I do not. I do not.
LT: Alright. So. We are gonna head to the next section, bill. And we, uh, this sec, this next section is we affectionately call What's popping? What's popping? D what's popping bill?
DC: What's popping?
LT: So Bill, this is our chance to shout out, shout down, or simply air, something happening in around marketing today that we think is good fodder for discussion.
And Bill, I think you have a juicy one for us.
Bill Pearce: Yeah. A again, if I'm a brand manager right now, if I'm a VP of marketing right now, the thing I'm probably, uh, foremost in my mind thinking about is media censorship, right? So let's say I'm back being the CMO at Taco Bell. I absolutely would've been in that late night, uh, segment with Jimmy Kimmel.
Um, so you pull, if you pull that brand, you prevent me from reaching my target consumer. Mm-hmm. Now you investing with my business. Now what brand people have to wrestle with is also brand safety. So in the, in the, in the environment that we're in right now where people are coming down on one side or another.
Yep. Brands are gonna have to come down on one side or another. Playing it safe is gonna get really hard to do. Now, not every brand has to make a choice, right? So Taco Bell, they should be in the middle of this based on who their audience is, based on what the, is, right. How they wanna reach people. They should be a leader.
If I was on Pringles like I was in the past, or I was on Tampas, probably sit this one out. But I'd, I'd be really interested in where are my brand messages going and how do I keep it out of the toxicity that exists right now? So where, when I was coming up, we didn't have to worry about this really, really no controversy was what did whoever say last night?
And, you know, but that was it. You know, it would be done by within a day now with the immediacy of YouTube with mm-hmm. You know, social media amplification, it's a big deal. And brands are gonna have to figure out and, you know, can my brand sit this out? Or if I can't sit this out, where will I wanna play?
So it comes down to always brave brands will make brave choices and will likely be rewarded for it. So Nike, get out there, Taco Bell, get out there. Um, if you're not those brands, maybe you can sit this out and you can figure out, alright, where am I gonna spend my dollars? But guess what? Sooner or later it's coming for you two.
Ooh, I love this. D you, you go Larry. You you go brother. I love it as well. I do.
LT: So this is an awesome one to surface for us, bill. And. I think it goes back to is the Brand Nerds we are and brand practitioners that we are. It goes back to who your consumer is. That's really what you're talking about. Let's you, you know, as a, let's keep it the B2C for this conversation.
Right? So Bill's point is Taco Bell's consumer, our younger folks who are going to have, um, uh, are gonna be sitting on one side of the fence on this as it relates to censorship. And if you're Taco Bell, let's just use it as an, as an example, and you sit it out, you are then viewed as taking a point of view by sitting out.
DC: Yep. Mm-hmm.
LT: And so that is not the place you want to be. You want to be in a place where you're actually going to, as Bill said, be brave and be genuine to who your brand is and to who your consumer is. You have to line those things up. You have to be purposeful about it. And you have to make sure that, um, that again.
You're gonna stand for something that's gonna connect all those dots. Um, and so some brands can sit it out. But I think what we're also saying, and Brand Nerds this is something that DC Bill and I didn't have to deal with when, when we were in the throes of corporate marketing, we never thought about the political ramifications.
But when you are brand planning, you better understand where your target consumers are as it relates to the political spectrum, especially as it relates to censorship. So at least you're gonna evaluate consciously whether you're gonna lean in or, or can afford to sit it out. So that's my perspective on this, and I'm so glad you, you brought this to the forefront.
D, what do you think?
DC: I'm gonna connect this to a couple of, uh, points that Bill made earlier. One point that you made, Bill was, uh, build a big brand. If you're building a big brand. You must understand clearly what that brand is about, including its personality. If you have a brand like Nike that at its heart, this is the second thing you said about no matter the tagline or strap line, they have maintained this competitiveness, this ferocity in their brand.
If that is what your brand is about, you cannot abandon that based on whatever the machinations are of the temperature in a given country. You've got to stay true to what your brand is. I'll give an example, while not in any way close to the social media of today, when I was working on the Sprite brand, when we launched the Obey Your Thirst campaign, the equivalent of social media then was.
People would write letters to the bottlers expressing their displeasure, and then those letters to the bottlers would make their make their way into corporate, which would make their way to whatever brand team needed to see them. This is 1994, and Sprite had gone from, I like to Sprite in you with the main, uh, endorser being Macaulay Culkin of Home Alone fame to obey your thirst with African American rappers and, and African American basketball players.
The letters that we received went something like this. We're never buying Sprite or any products from the Coca-Cola company again, because the people that you all are featuring in the Sprite advertising look like they would steal the product rather than buy the product another one of these letters, Bill said, we will no longer be purchasing any products from the Coca-Cola company because the lips in the advertising of the Sprite, uh, brand look like they could fit over the knob of my trailer hitch.
LT: These are, these are true things, Brand Nerds. This is what true things.
DC: Let, let in, let that sink in. Brand Nerds let that sink in. We were called to the, to, we won't say whose office, but very senior to have a discussion about whether we should pull the campaign. Yes. One of the personality attributes of Sprite was to be bold.
We were encouraging young people to trust their instincts, to obey their thirst. We wanted them to be bold. You, you can't fold up tent if that's what your brand is about. And you're attempting to give something to consumers, to Larry's point and yours, bill, that says, you too should be bold. Even if you make a mistake, you can't fold up the tent.
We didn't fold up the tent. We could have, but we did not. And now you have Sprite at that time, which was a, a middling brand is now the third biggest non-alcoholic beverage in this country. Larger than Pepsi. Stay true to the brand was the bold. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, that's my response.
Bill Pearce: I, I, I think like, I love the stuff DC that you guys did.
Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. 'cause in the category, um, you know, setting up was a very credible competitor then, right? Oh, there was, they, they were, they were 75% of the lemon. Lime. Yeah. And we, we, we were much less than that.
DC: Correct.
Bill Pearce: Yeah. And you know, one of the things I loved about Coke um, was that competitiveness, right?
Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. To win every convenience store, right? Every, every, every c store. Yes. If there was a chance to put your thumb on the neck of your competitor, you did it right. And I can remember being in fountain sales and trying to convince a customer to throw out seven up to throw out Dr. Pepper, that we could do it with Sprite and Mr. Pib.
DC: Mr. Pib. Yes.
Bill Pearce: You got it done on Sprite. Mr. Pib didn't quite pull it off.
DC: Didn't quite not, not yet.
Bill Pearce: Yeah. So, um, but the thing I always loved about Coke is that, Hey, that didn't work. We'll try again. Mm-hmm. Right. Um, now in this case, someone at Coke eventually was convinced to be bold. And then, you know, you get the corporate backsliding.
It's controversial, you know, I'm sure public affairs officer was like, uh, right. I I, I've seen that. You know, I've had those visits where, um, somebody from, you know, some sort of risk mitigation function is like
DC: External affairs.
Bill Pearce: Yeah. That's always a great one. Like, you know, you need to change your selling line because yes, it could be conceived.
I'm like, well, anything could be conceived. Right? So what are the facts?
LT: Right.
Bill Pearce: What are the facts? So, you know, if you're not,
you know, there's a, there's a, there's a Bible verse. Be hot or be cold. If you're lukewarm, I will spit you outta my mouth. Mm. And I always thought marketing was that way. Mm. Be hot or be cold. Don't be lukewarm. Mm.
LT: Love that.
DC: Love that.
Love that.
LT: I think that summed it up for us. Don't you think so, D?
DC: Indeed it did.
LT: All right, Bill. Uh, this has been just fabulous. Bill, you've been amazing. Uh, we're, we're at the, uh, we're at the show close now, and we, we go as I posit learnings DC will posit his wonderful, um, connect the dots and, uh, and we will have the, the opportunity to share anything you may have learned from this great conversation.
I've learned a ton. Um, I have a bunch of 'em I'm gonna go through relatively quickly. Um, this is number one for a reason. We can't say this enough, Bill has alluded to this from the beginning through the, through the end of, of, uh, of what's popping here. Brand nerds. It's all about building brand first and foremost.
If you're a marketer and you're not building brand, first and foremost, it's going to dissipate in the ether. That's number one. Number two, Brand Nerds. What is your X factor? What makes you distinct and different as a marketer? Bill told us what his was, where his background in sales and how he leveraged it.
What's yours? Number three. Uh, this, if you are working in marketing where you are working with a sales team, you best be in situations where you have the perspective Bill did and where the results that he achieved was. You have to have sales, get it, and understand what they need, and if you deliver that, it's gonna take you a long way.
Number four, less is more is everything in life. Bill talked about that as it relates to sales presentations. Take that with the two sides with sales presentations, but usually less is more. Um, conveys everywhere. Number five, be the type of mentor bill is where, where he talked about listening first and then providing positive feedback and then connecting the dots.
But start with listening. Number six, we love bill's rules. No drama, no surprises, , no self-inflicted wounds. What are your rules when you're managing folks? Think about that. Number seven, performance marketing is important tactic, but it does not replace building and sustaining brand.
Number eight, like Bill, always have family on the forefront and balance. And the last one, brand nerds. Um, that Bill just said, be hot or be cold, but don't be lukewarm. We love that. So today in the censorship era, brands with brand positioning that are brave and appeal to consumers who care about current censorship cannot afford to be lukewarm.
You better pick a place and go with it. Those are mine
DC: Outstanding, Larry, Brand nerds. The, uh, last thing that you heard Larry say, which was a paraphrase that Bill said is, uh, revelations three verse 15 through 16. If you wanna see the origins of that bill, I don't know if you've seen any of our podcast or not.
Whether you have or haven't, I'm gonna tell you now what I will attempt to do at this stage of our journey together, which has been just fantastic. I, I'm feeling ebullient.
Bill Pearce: Okay.
DC: Uh, this is the part of the program where I make an attempt to share with our guest what I have experienced in the time that we've had together as to what they may be offering this planet that only they can offer.
And if they don't give it, we don't get it. And I'm going to try to do that with you now, bill, in the get comfy section, we were, uh, talking about your sales experience. And this is where you mentioned this X factor. The words you said as to why you arrived at this and how this became an X factor with you is because the sales team would say, you understand what we need, understanding.
Then on the question, when we were asking five questions, we talked to, we asked the question about who had the most influence in your career. You started with Jeff Fra. Then you move to your students in this notion of a tuneup. And then I asked, Hey, hey, hey Bill, how do you discern what to tune up with each of your students?
And you went through a couple things. You listen a lot. You then said, you might ask 'em a question, where are you struggling? And then you landed on, I go to the prior relationship. And then you said, I remind them, I, I remind them of something that they did well, that's understanding the students. And then finally, when we ask you about your first branding experience that just set your soul ablaze, you talked about Nike.
How a firefighter would roll up to a meet in a van, pop the doors open, and then you all would be on that, like moths to light. And then you said Nike. They have an understanding of the athlete or in Charles Barkley parlance athlete. So we have understanding us as a sales team. We have understanding students well enough to give them a tuneup that's bespoke for them.
And then we have understanding the athlete for Nike. Understanding is a theme for you. It does not surprise me that you are teaching because teaching is about helping your students understand. Which leads me to this. My mother, her name, Gloria Cobbin, she passed, uh, more than 20 years ago. She used to say to me, bill, when I would drone on, she would say, baby, are you arriving at a point?
And I would say, yeah, yeah. Yes, mom, I'm, I'm arriving at a point. So Bill, I'm arriving at a point here, Larry. And I like to say, bill, that marketing isn't really marketing. It's psychology. It's psychology. It's about getting humans to do things. It's about understanding human behavior and Brand Nerds. Many of you all in marketing, you know about.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. His first name is Abraham, by the way. We, we understand that as you get to the top of this pyramid of needs, first at the top, first and foremost is self actualization. And what you have done and what you've had done with you through Jeff Fra, what you do with your students, and also as a dad and father, by budgeting your hours, you have found a way to self actualize.
You've done that bill and you've had people pour into you to help you do that, and you've poured into others. So I say that what you are, bill Pierce is the Abraham Maslow of the brand and marketing game. Oh, that's. Incredibly nice thing to say DC That's that's very lovely. Thank you. You are very welcome, sir.
LT: DC connects the dots. That's what he does. Bill. Yeah. Yeah. Um, before we sign off, anything, uh, that you wanna accentuate from this wonderful conversation that we had,
Bill Pearce: so I just want to let all those young marketers know you are in the best profession. Um mm-hmm. You know, you can go work on Wall Street and make more money, you can go work in the tech world and work 90 hours a week and be miserable or whatever.
But, uh, what DC talked about with Larry talked about the, uh, you know, building a brand. There is psychic value from that. No other function scattered, right? Mm. And we were also lucky enough that we got to work on innovation, right? Mm-hmm. So not only is true existing brand had to keep that going, it's new brands and had to give birth to them.
Yes. Peter Drucker, who's probably for my money, still the best godfather Yes. Management perspective. Drucker once said, there is marketing, there is innovation, and everything else is overhead. Right? So true. Because value is created through marketing and through innovation and everything else is just kind of there to exist to make sure those two things happen.
And when you're having a bad day, when you're in that annual planning, when your market share is down, when your main competitor is thrown all sorts of money at the trade, remember that? Mm-hmm. Remember that you're a great career, um, and, uh, you know, enjoy the psychic value of marketing because nobody else gets to do what you get to do.
LT: That is a perfect mic drop to the close of the show, uh, Brand Nerd. Thanks so much for listening to Brands Beats and Bites. The executive producers are Jeff Shirley, Darryl "DC" Cobbin, Larry Taman Hailey Cobbin, Jade Tate, and Tom Dioro
DC: The pod father.
LT: That is he, and if you do like this podcast, please subscribe and share and for those on Apple Podcasts if you're so inclined.
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